As We Read: Literary Writing on the Web reading list

As We Read is a website where reading lists are collected for those who want to introduce themselves into a subject. I was asked to compose such a reading list and I happily complied. I chose a subject that is very dear to me: literary writing online. Read the introduction below and find the items over at As We Read. (Some of them are in Dutch.)

‘How do we write when we write online?’ is the question asked by the first item on this list and by the list as a whole. We write a lot online; that’s for sure. Of course, there are discussions about the mobile phone destroying our sense of grammar, about image-biased media overturning the craft of writing, whether moving or not, and about whole populations no longer able to read books or, for that matter, anything over a thousand words.

Still, written language is very much alive on the internet, and day in day out, we write hundreds of words on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, and so on. What does this do to the kind of language with a deep interest in language – namely the language of literature? The web must have some effect on literary writing, right? Literary writing is bound to transform in a digital context, no? Below, I’ve collected what I consider the best writing on online (literary) writing. It’s not about e-books, digital narratives or science fiction; it’s about good old Literature as found in that sphere of a medium: the Internet.